This delicious potato kugel is based on my friend Lauren’s recipe and she swears by using red-skin potatoes. The cup idea comes from my husband’s best friend Adam’s mom, Geanie (what a mouthful). Hubby remembers going to their house on Saturday nights and raiding the fridge for these cups. The best part about them is that every piece is a crusty corner piece, so nobody has to fight over that coveted crunch.
MORE: BROWSE ALL OUR KUGEL RECIPES
Make Ahead Tip: While potato kugel will be at its best made fresh (refrigeration or freezing will cause it to lose some crunch), you can make it ahead and even freeze it with these instructions.
1. Slightly under bake, cool completely , wrap tightly and freeze.
2. Thaw at room temperature, reheat, uncovered at 375°F for 10 minutes.
Potato Kugel Cups
Servings
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 3 eggs
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 6 large Idaho potatoes
- 1 large onion quartered
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425°F. Liberally oil six (4- to 6-ounce) glass dessert dishes or custard cups with 1 to 2 tablespoons of evoo each. Place custard cups on a baking pan.
- Fill a large bowl with cold water and, as you peel potatoes, place them in cold water to prevent browning.
- Place the pan of cups in 425°F oven to heat up the evoo (be very careful with glass, extreme temperature changes can cause it to shatter) .
- Beat eggs in a small bowl. Add salt and pepper, mix well, and set aside.
- Pour ¾ cup of evoo in a small saucepan and place over medium-low heat.
- Cut potatoes lengthwise into halves or quarters so they fit into food processor feed tube. Process potatoes and onions using the blade that creates thin, shoestring-like strips.
- Transfer potatoes and onions to a large bowl, add egg mixture and heated oil from stovetop, mix very well. Remove any large pieces of potatoes or onions that weren’t processed properly.
- Remove heated cups from the oven and spoon potato mixture evenly into hot, oiled cups.
- Bake at 425°F for 1 hour. If the sides are still pale, cook for 20 minutes longer until the tops look crunchy and sides look golden and browned. Loosen edges with a knife, unmold and serve on a platter.
Tips:
- To make this as a potato kugel pie, bake at 425°F in a 9-inch round glass baking dish for 1 hour 20 minutes, depending on desired crunchiness.
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This sounds good, but I am not fond of eggs. With three eggs, is this going to be reall eggy? And doesn’t adding the hot oil to the potato and egg mixture cook the eggs a little?
I don’t find it eggy and I have a son who also doesn’t like eggs and he does like this. Adding the oil to the mixture doesn’t really cook the eggs because they are so mixed up.
its a known problem with pyrex
same exact thing happened to me. it is the mix of cold ingredients hitting hot pyrex. BEWARE. shattered into 1,0000 pieces of glass. Next time I will use metal.
Hi Jamie,
Have you ever weighed the potatoes and the onion to know exactly how much to use of each? Thanks, Julie
No, sorry we have not weighed them but it is not so important for this recipe to be totally exact.
How can I make these ahead of time & still have them crunchy when reheated? Also, making in muffin tins & maybe mini muffin tins for little kids.
Hi Jamie, can I bake these in standard muffin tins? If so, any advice?
Yes you can make them in muffin cups, grease them well. You can also make in disposable tins.
The Potato Kugel Cups looks great and its Gluten Free,I will make this for Rosh Hashanah. Shanah Tovah From the Beautiful city of Tzfat
WHOA — that sounds AHHHMAZING. I would just add a healthy handful or two of your favorite shredded cheese and DIG IN!!!! So so sorry I am late to respond but should be delish ANYTIME of year.
I’ve made this recipe a hundred times and love it. But for Shavuos I kind of want to make it cheesy. Could I just add cheese to the recipe or does it need milk or cottage cheese or something like that?
metal can work but please grease well!
So glad you like it, I will do my best to answer your questions. For the salt, it is probably best to follow the recipe if that was what you liked last time, but if you felt you could get away with a bit less salt then maybe 2 1/2 teaspoons would be enough.
You put the oil in the pan in the hot oven for about 10 minutes, while you are preparing everything should be enough time, you just want it to be hot and you shouldn’t have to worry about it burning. The only thing we heard is that glass pyrex has to go in when the oven is hot already. On the stove, if you keep the oil on the low it should be fine, but it depends on how high the heat is, you just want it hot, if you start to see smoke take it off the heat.
Jamie doesn’t have plans right now to be in Palm Beach, but things change and hope you make it next time. Thanks for using our site.
Made last year and everyone loved it. I wrote and just got the recipe again. A few questions:
1. If I’m making in 9×12 Pyrex and using 9 potatoes, do I 1.5 the amount of salt and pepper too? I’m thinking it may be too much.
2. How long do you leave the oil in the Pyrex in the oven before putting the mixture in dish? I don’t want it to burn or catch fire. How long do you leave the oil on the stovetop? Same reasoning.
I use many of your recipes. Thank you.
Are you coming back to Palm Beach Gardens this year? I was out of town last year when you came, but my brother went to hear you, because I always rave about you. ❤️
Oh my oh my- I love potato kugel and hate making it, especially for Pesach because I have a pea-sized food processor. I was feeling especially patient this evening and thought I’d give this a shot. I don’t think these will last until chag/shabbat! Thanks for demystifying the whole lot AND using EVOO- however you choose to pronounce it- Up here, we just call it shemen zait 🙂 Moadim L’Simcha!
i like to unmold mine, covered on a sheet pan and keep the oven low. also dont start with ice cold kugels. warm them to room temperature and you will have a better chance at a hot center than if they are cold and the outside just gets over-browned and the inside remains cold. good luck
Not really. You can cook them most of the way through but not with the super browned top. Halfway through will result in mushy potatoes.
can you make this ahead of time cook half way and finish the next day?
There are over 200 comments so my answer may already be here but I cannot find it. I’ve searched through several comments and finally decided to post the question. I am wondering how do you serve these hot for the meal during the seder when you aren’t sure how long exactly it will be until the food should be served? I know I can guess about the time but I was just curious how some people do it.
Thank you
You can use greased ceramic or glass ramekins. High will work well.
So does that mean that a metal muffin pan WONT work and shouldn’t be used?
Can I use ceramic ramekins? Or is it better to use metal jumbo muffin pan?
Tasty but too much oil and quite soggy if you don’t strain/dry the shredded potato.
I added a bit of cauliflower rice which was great.
The blade is a shredding disk. Looks like a metal circle with perforations. Cuisinart comes with that blade.
Thanks! Even in the picture on this page the regular shredding blade was used? Looks stringer and thinner for some reason.
The potatoes shrink up once cooked. Enjoy!
Hi Jamie! I’m having a bit of trouble trying to find out what a food processor “shoestring blade” is. Can you please post what the technical term for the blade is? The closest thing I could find was a “julienne 3mm” blade that goes with a specific Cuisineart model. I noticed in your video for these, the texture was more shredded, whereas the pictures on this page definitely look stringier. I am trying to go for the stringier look. Finally, if the “shoestring blade” can only be found with the expensive food processors. would a mandolin slicer work or do you think the strings would tarnish before cooking?
That’s okay, it’s the taste that counts.
i made it !…it was great and yummy but it did not look as good as yours!
Whoa! That is crazy! I am glad you are ok and didn’t get hurt. Sounds like there was a crack or something in The dish!?
I wonder if your ingredients were really cold?
So sorry! The dish is really tasty and I hope you try it again.
The same thing happened to my daughter in law at least 3 times – one time I was making potato wedges and had several batches so i dumped them, from the baking pan into the glass pan so i could do the next batch and the glass pan exploded – no cracks were in the pan…. its very strange
Made this in a 9×13 Pyrex dish and the dish EXPLODED when I put potato mixture into it. The mixture was in the dish all leveled out, ready to be returned to oven – then CABOOM. I think I will use ceramic or stoneware from now on.
Yay, so glad it was a hit, we love happy husbands and wives and children for that matter.
Made these twice during Pesach – and my husband wants them to be a regular all year round! Thank you x
Awesome Janet, glad it worked out, everyone should always adjust to their preference.
Tamar Genger MA, RD
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I made this for the first night of seder. We all loved it. I used the oil as directed but felt it was too greasy. Also, I should have used a larger onion because the onion flavor was barely noticeable. I will definitely make it again with the couple of minor corrections that I just mentioned.
I made this for 1st night seder and they were a big hit! I used a mandolin,a muffin tin, and ended up cooking about 70 minutes. Thank you for this easy, yummy recipe
Thanks. this is the answer to my question……
Hi Sandy! Dark metal can cook faster than glass, so check them at the 45 minute mark for brownness/doneness. If they aren’t done, let them go for another 10 minutes, then check again. You may need to lift one of the kugels up to check the sides for browning.
Thanks so much and happy holidays!
I am attempting these for the first time tonight. I am planning to make them in a cupcake tin. Does the cook time remain one hour?
Doubling it should work for that size, ultimately it will either be thinner or thicker based on the size of the pan. We haven’t needed any starch, but curious to see if anyone else has.
If i want to make in a 10×15 pyrex, should i just increase recipe by 50%? Also, this recipe doesn’t call for any starch, does anyone find it needs it?
If you have a BLENDER, you can cutup a couple of potatoes and drop them in the blender, cover them with water and let it go…just watch that you don’t blend until they are dust!!!!! Actually, I use the “pulse” mode so that I can check on them ever so often. I do that all the time. I broke my processor years ago and returned (happily) to an oldtime blender which does a fantastic job anytime I’m feeling “domestic”.
Just be sure the cups are well greased so the potatoes don’t stick and they crisp up. Maybe a tablespoon each, depending upon the size of your cups.
can you please be specific how much oil on each cup?
yes…please drain. squeeze out water from potatoes and onions.
Hi Pam, I live in Beersheva and made Aliyah just last year, I miss Idaho potatoes, but I find that the large red potatoes are actually closer to Idaho then the other ones. Either way for kugel it doesn’t matter quite as much.
You don’t drain the liquids after grating the onion and potatoes?
Thanks Laura Happy Passover – 2 cool things – these potatoes are refrigerated not frozen – and they are Kosher: ( maybe others will enjoy them too – I used them to make latkes and they were FAB!)
Here is the preservative list:
What are the hard-to-pronounce ingredients and why are they there?
All of these ingredients are used to ensure you have a fresh, safe and high quality product.
Potassium sorbate is used as a mold and yeast inhibitor. This ingredient is also in yogurts, cheese, meats and other refrigerated potatoes.
Disodium pyrophosphate prevents discoloration of the cooked potatoes and is used in almost all refrigerated potato products.
Sodium bisulfite is used to maintain freshness.
Xanthan Gum – a food additive used in our retail potato products that helps the mashed potatoes stay bound with their liquid content as they cool.
Are your products Kosher?
Yes. We are proud to say that all of our products are certified Kosher.
I had no doubt they were kosher! but…brace yourself for the lecture, you cannot ( nor can I) most of those ingredients. But we both can say potato! i would personally stick with simple potatoes and not eat all those chemicals.
remember I said most shredded potatoes are coated with something? YEP! these are coated.
that is not say they would not work, just that I like my food REAL and if you notice, all the recipes I write are real too!
my advice is to roll up your sleeves and grate some potatoes and keep your meal REAL! enjoy!
We live in Mitzpe Ramon, Israel (made aliyah a year ahead of Jamie Geller!) and Idaho potatoes are unheard of down here! Would the big yellow potatoes substitute well? TIA
It depends upon what size cup or muffin tin you use. You can make these up to 1-2 days in advance but they will not be as crispy once refrigerated.
I am not familiar with that product. Many frozen shredded potatoes have a coating sprayed on them which would change the recipe.
1 large potato shredded is about 2 cups.
Yes. You can! Enjoy
Enjoy!
Well, OUR generations of doing Potato Kugel tells us: too much oil, too many eggs for that quantity of potatos. Other wise, Happy Kosher Pesach!
Can I use a muffin tin for these?
Ok – so the skinny is glass is better than muffin tins? Can you use the pre-shredded potatoes (not frozen) http://www.simplypotatoes.com/products/ – and if so how many cups is 6 large potatoes?